Trolley Tuesday 4/13/21 - The Market Street Railway and the United Railroads of San Francisco

Okay, now it looks like we're back to trolleys after spending so much time on cable cars the past two episodes. I think. I hope? Anyway... Before San Francisco had its single transit system in the form of the Municipal Railway, or MUNI, there were two companies that ruled the roost and made famous the "Roar of the Four" down Market Street. This other company was the Market Street Railway (MSR), which for a time was also known as the much-maligned United Railroads of San Francisco (URR). Under both names, the company experienced earthquakes, deadly labor strikes, and city franchise disputes across their 87-year history before finally folding to the might of the MUNI. On today's Trolley Tuesday, let's take A Trip Down Market Street as we look at the wide and varied history of the Market Street Railway.

  

By Horse and Steam

A Market Street "steam dummy" with passenger car at
Market and Castro Streets, circa 1880s. According to the MSR,
this is now a Chevron Station.
(Market Street Railway)

In an 1880s view, horsecars and cable cars crowd
the busy thoroughfare of Market Street at
Lotta's Fountain.
(SFMTA Photo Archive)

Way before Andrew Smith Hallidie even had a chance to think up what eventually became the San Francisco Cable Car system, the Market Street Railroad was always there. Franchised in 1857 as the first horsecar line in the city, it was founded by wealthy landowner Thomas Hayes (1820-1868, for whom Hayes Valley and Hayes Street are named after) to sell land all across the city's "Western Addition" (what is now the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and Pacific Heights). The line opened on July 4, 1860, and managed to continue past Hayes' death, becoming a steam-railway line by the mid 1870s. The line was also regauged from "Cape" gauge (3'6") to "Portland" gauge (5'6") to accommodate new steam dummies built by the local Albion Foundry. In 1880, a standard-gauge (4'8") extension between Valencia and Castro Streets were added as well. This is also where Henry Casebolt got his start, building horsecars for the MSR with his partner, Charles Van Gulpin.

Collegiate Cable Cars

Converted "California Cars" No. 577 and 1212 are
seen waiting for passengers at the Ferry Building, 1900.
At this time, not much differentiated cable cars from
trolley cars, other than the motors and taller stances.
(Market Street Railway)

By 1882, new ownership had moved in to manage the MSR, led by our old friend and former Governor of California, Leland Stanford (1824-1893). Though he and his associates already owned the more-well-known California Street Cable Railway (Cal Cable), which was established in 1878, Stanford planned on converting the outdated MSR into a modern cable car railway. Both the horsecars and the steam trains were removed and the gauges were standardized to... standard gauge (I can't help but be incredibly redundant sometimes), making it the only standard gauge cable car line in San Francisco. The MSR then proved to be an incredibly-popular cable car line, as its services from the old Ferry Terminal and through the business district proved invaluable to local commuters. Its cars were developed as larger copies of the small Powell St. cars (which MSR also owned), as well as open-bench cars that could seat between 50 and 75 people at a time. The line was so busy (and thus so profitable) that during rush hours at the Ferry Terminal, a cable car unloaded, was turned around, and departed every 15 seconds. 

Deep in the United Railroads Era, nine cable cars are spotted lining up for
the URR turntable at the Ferry Building, 1905.
(Market Street Railway)

No trolley wires here, no sir. Just good ol', beautiful
cable down Market Street in 1895.
(Alamy Stock Photos)

When Stanford died in 1893, his ownership of the MSR and Cal Cable fell to the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP). Thanks to the technological advances by Virginian inventor Frank J. Sprague around this time, the SP thought it'd be a good idea to begin converting its enormous MSR system into a streetcar system. They even put out an ad in the San Francisco Examiner selling horsecars for housing developments, eventually birthing the famous "Carville-by-the-Sea" community. Unfortunately, two hardships harangued this effort, with the first being San Francisco's Board of Supervisors banning any trolley wire hung within the downtown area in 1891. The second, and most tragic, was the loss of SP president Collis P. Huntington in 1900. At the time, the company's Bay Area electric operations were being run by Henry E. Huntington (Collis' nephew) and Isaias W. Hellman under their eponymous Huntington-Hellman Syndicate, and it was rumored that Henry would inherit his uncle's position. However, prior to Collis' death, Old Man Huntington was borrowing money from an investment firm helmed by the Speyer Brothers, and they inherited ownership of the SP after his death. Not wanting to elect Henry E. Huntington to the board and create an unwanted dynasty, they screwed Henry out of inheriting his uncle's company and eventually led to the SP being owned by Edward Henry Harriman in 1901.

Wait, hang on, I'm getting a message from my editor.

"Stop with the corporate history, get back to the trolleys. The people are falling asleep."

Well, alright then.

It's not like Henry ever did anything else after that anyway...
(Public Domain)

  

Sugar-Coated Trolley Wires

That is a man with a lively moustache
but lifeless eyes. Patrick Calhoun,
as photographed in the SF Chronicle in 1907.
(IBEW 1245)

Around the same time as SP's company political intrigue, the MSR was swept up by a group of Baltimore investors led by Patrick Calhoun (1856-1943, grandson of John C. Calhoun, 7th Vice President of the US and noted defender of slavery). When they gained control of the MSR, the system was a motley collection of old cable cars, "California Car" streetcars, steam railroad equipment, and horsecars. There was also 234 total miles of track (split between four gauges), and 166 miles of trolley wire, leading to the renaming of the MSR as the United Railroads of San Francisco (URR). Public sentiment was also at an all-time low towards the MSR, with plenty of residents opposing the "ugliness" of overhead trolley wires. Nowhere was this sentiment heard any louder than in the booming voices of the Spreckels Sugar Family. 

A contemporary photograph of
Rudolph Spreckels, with a more
magnanimous moustache.
(Cypress Lawn Heritage Foundation)

In 1905, the MSR was electrifying the Sutter Street Cable Railway, where "sugar king" Rudolph Spreckels (1872-1958) and ex-mayor James Phelan (1861-1930, also a noted racist) both lived. Patrick Calhoun attempted to buy support of these men to beautify and add to Golden Gate Park's already-significant land acreage, but the two men simply wouldn't budge. Like the rest of San Francisco, they supported placing the trolley wires in a street conduit just like the cable cars, and the methods to do this surely would bankrupt the URR. The URR's consulting attorney, Abe Ruef, proposed building "ornamental trolley poles" along the streets where the URR wanted to build along and this plan was later agreed to in late 1905. Incensed that the city would just go on with this plan, and eager to stick it in Calhoun's face that their "conduit" method was better, Mayor Phelan, Rudolph Spreckels, and the old Sugar King himself, Claus Spreckels, filed to incorporate a new street railway named the Municipal Street Railway on April 17, 1906. It couldn't have come at a better time.

  

EARTHQUAKE!

April 18, 1906; 5:00AM.

(Market Street Railway)

A passenger gets his transfer punched for the Hayes cable line, inbound for the Ferry Terminal. The sun is barely shining over the East Bay as @KarlTheFog has retreated elsewhere, leaving the area a bit hotter than normal. For now, the city is at peace.

(The Miles Brothers)

12 minutes later, this passenger is en route for the Ferry Terminal. The cable car trundles down Market Street at a gentle 9.5 miles an hour. The passenger wipes the sweat off their brow, when suddenly the car begins to rock. No, the tracks begin to rock. No, the CITY begins to rock!

(Encyclopedia Britannica)

The cable car screeches to a stop with the familiar smell of heated pinewood. The passengers hold on for dear life as the buildings around them seem to melt and liquefy and the ground cracks and buckles. Then, the entire city runs for their lives, as does the passenger, as a massive earthquake is now ripping San Francisco apart.

(Getty Images)

From the Ferry Terminal to Mount Sutro, the earthquake takes no prisoners. Businesses and homes are completely destroyed, cable car lines are ripped and tangled into ribbons, and the cars themselves are bounced off their tracks like toys, or crushed by falling debris from the wood-and-brick powerhouses.

(Rare Historical Photos)

The shaking soon halts after almost a minute, but the destruction isn’t finished yet, as a tremendous fire eats all of inner San Francisco, sparing only the intersection of Washington/Jackson/Sansome and part of Russian Hill’s north end. This fire burns for the next four days, aided by inexperienced firemen demolishing buildings to act as firebreaks.

(SFMTA Photo Library)

(SFMTA Photo Library)

At the near-destroyed Washington/Mason cable house, the workmen inside keep the cable machinery running as the fire grows up Market Street, gorging itself on Nob Hill. Cars are dispatched and evacuated rapidly to Bay and Taylor Streets, but to no avail; the fires eat them too down to the frames.

(Outsidelands.org)

By the end of the great disaster, 80% of the city is destroyed and over 3,000 people, at most, are dead. The 7.9 Richter-magnitude quake is the record highest for California and damage totals over $11.2 billion in 2018 dollars. Market Street, apart from the Ferry Terminal, is almost all leveled. The major carhouses of Cal Cable and the Powell lines were destroyed, along with 117 stored cars. This brought an end to the cable cars’ reign, as both URR and the still-independent Geary Street, Park & Ocean Railway sought electrification upon rebuilding.

  

The San Francisco Streetcar Strike of 1907

A contemporary newspaper cartoon
of Patrick Calhoun buying up all of
San Francisco's transit lines.
(Cleveland Memory Project)

Following the Great Earthquake, Patrick Calhoun and the URR were eager to expand. In the process of helping to rebuild the city's now-decimated public transit system, they began eating up the other six cable car lines, including the Clay Street Hill Railroad, the Ferries & Cliff House, and even trolley companies like the San Francisco & San Mateo Electric Railway (the city's first trolley line, which URR absorbed in 1902). Calhoun didn't just stop at buying up all of San Francisco's cable car lines, as he also began pushing bribes through the local Board of Supervisors to finally break the deadlock on hanging trolley wire down Market Street to replace the cable cars. He was trialed for bribery, but after 22 months the charges fell on a hung jury and he was free. Worse still, a season of general strikes in 1907 began hitting San Francisco from electricians to laundry workers, even iron workers and phone operators, with all striking for higher wages and eight-hour work days. This flew in the face of a contemporary ordinance that decreed any strikers firing upon police would immediately be killed in a "shoot to kill" order. 

Armed guards and scab motormen find their rest in
a URR carhouse, 1907.
(Unknown Author)

By May 4, 1907, even the streetcar operators across the United Railroads began looking at Patrick Calhoun with disdain. The man was associated with noted strikebreaker James Farley (1874-1914, "The King of the Strikebreakers") and the local Carmen's Union had already protested against him between 1902 and 1907. Calhoun always prided himself on being able to not only afford experienced strikebreakers like Farley, but also in hundreds of "scab" gripmen and motormen to take the strikers' places. However, now 1,500 union streetcar workers voted to strike for the 8-hour workday. In what was called the "San Francisco Streetcar War" by the local rags, strikers and sympathizers began halting all streetcar traffic along URR rails and intimidating scab operators to stay inside their carbarns. 400 armed strikebreakers were huddled in these carbarns with them, armed to teeth and erecting barbed wire around the entrances. Patrick Calhoun remained unreachable for comment, while union leaders like Waiter Union delegate Selig Schulman urge for a massive general strike to "Tie up the Town".

A "scab streetcar" emerges from the Turk Street Carbarn after the strike is quelled.
(Unknown Author, possibly SFMTA or MSR)

A "scab streetcar" is escorted by police on horseback
and motorcar to protect it from violence.
(San Francisco Public Library)

On the morning of Tuesday, May 7, 1907, the planned strike went through beginning at the URR's Turk Street Carbarn. As six streetcars left to start their day, the crowd set themselves upon and began hurling stones and bricks at the open-sided streetcars. In response, the strikebreakers let out a volley of gunshots into a crowd and killed two people, 19-year-old James Walsh from a headshot and 23-year-old James Buchanan through the stomach. Twenty others were wounded, but "Bloody Tuesday" was only getting started. Everywhere the cars rolled, lower-class San Franciscans laid themselves before the streetcars, even mothers with babies in hand, and dared the men to run them down; meanwhile, the upper-class citizens would hail the strikebreakers as heroes with flowers and kisses, celebrating Calhoun himself as a hero against the Union and the Graft Prosecution. The days then turned to months, as strikers deliberately sabotaged and wrecked streetcars by pulling down trees and power lines and blocking tracks with heavy railroad ties. Even more dreaded than the sight of streetcars being escorted by armed police on horseback was the "Car of Mystery", a converted work-flat that transported armed strikebreakers all over the URR system and, if agitated, would fire on strikers and sympathizers alike.

The infamous and shoddily-built "Car of Mystery", December 1, 1905.
(SFMTA Photo Archive)

The aftermath of the Labor Day 1907 strike,
with a strikebreaking officer tending to an
injured conductor.
(SFMTA Photo Archive)

The last big push by the streetcar union was Labor Day, 1907, where another large attack of five thousand men was centered on the URR fleet. Strikebreakers and police fired on the crowd and one building worker was left dead, with the total death toll for the whole strike being 35 people. At this point, Calhoun had hired so many scab operators that he could effectively replace the entire population of strikers with sympathetic men. Despite continued striking, boycotts, and sabotage, the Carmen Union conceded their termination in late 1908 and ceased to exist. Calhoun may have won this fight, but he eventually lost the war. In 1909, the Spreckels' Municipal Street Railway still had an active charter and the citizens, exhausted from two years of streetcar strikes, decided to put the streetcars into their own ownership by voting for a new municipal line down Geary Street. In 1912, the city declined to renew the Geary Street, Park & Ocean Railway's charter and immediately converted it into a municipal streetcar line. A disgraced Patrick Calhoun was forced out of the URR on year later as he was trialed with now-ex-Mayor Eugene "Handsome Gene" Schmitz on corruption charges in the wake of the 1907 Streetcar Strike. Calhoun lived another 30 years before dying in obscurity.

Patrick Calhoun during the initial corruption trial in 1907.
Man still has dead eyes, staring into your soul.
(Market Street Railway)

  

The Roar of the Four

The famous "Roar of the Four" down Market Street,
late 1930s. This route lasted until 1947, when the
Market Street tracks were removed in favor of buses.
(Simon Fraser University)

Though still known as the "United Railroads", the privately-owned streetcars were now at a disadvantage as they competed with the publicly-owned MUNI. Nowhere was this competition more evident than along the entire length of Market Street, where four streetcar lines converged on what was (and still is) San Francisco's busiest thoroughfare. The inner tracks were original MSR tracks, largely unchanged from the destruction wrought by the 1906 Earthquake, but the outer tracks were newer MUNI rails. The crowding and clattering of the streetcars led to the familiar nickname of the "Roar of the Four", and woe unto any pedestrian trying to cross the street. Woe was also inflicted upon the URR, as they spent much of the late 1910s in severe financial distress from recurring labor troubles, competition by the MUNI, and a deadly streetcar accident in 1918 that killed eight people. By the end of the decade, the URR entered reorganization and in its place was birthed, again, the Market Street Railway Company.

The original Market Street Railway logo.
(Market Street Railway)

Market Street Railway "Big" No. 19, an enormous monster of a cable car
designed to work on the Sacramento Clay Line. 
(Market Street Railway)

An ever-popular destination for Market Street riders
was Richmond's Playland amusement park on the 
West Side of San Francisco.
(FoundSF.org)

The MSR had never really gone away in the era of URR ownership, having been made into a holding company for much of Calhoun and his syndicate's debt. Now back in the forefront, the MSR made great pains to streamline, standardize, and make easier all of their operations for both themselves and the city. This included continuing to run the Powell-Mason St cable car as well as the Clay Street Hill Railway. The vintage stock were even given extensive refurbishment and new paint schemes with white fronts to better see them through the fog. These efforts, unfortunately, soon became unprofitable as both the MUNI and the city franchises began to eat away at the MSR. Public sentiment had turned against private transit companies, and the reputation of URR as a monopolistic company was still fresh even ten or more years on. Despite six repeated refusals for new bond issues by its citizens, the city was finally able to buy the Market Street Railway on May 16, 1944 and absorb its entire assets, from the cable cars to the electric streetcars, into the MUNI. Even the white fronts were painted over immediately to avoid paying royalties to the MSR's "paper shell" company.

I Know Now Why the Cable Car Dings

A young Maya Angelou on a family
trip at Los Angeles' Union Station.
(Unknown Author)

In the last years of the MSR, they also found a way to embed themselves into literary history. At age 16, a young black woman named Maya Angelou (then known as Marguerite Johnson) was attending the California Labor School in San Francisco when she decided that she wanted to be a streetcar conductor. "I saw women on the street cars with their little changer belts." She eventually told Oprah Winfrey in 2013, "They had caps with bibs on them and form-fitting jackets. I loved their uniforms. I said that is the job I want." Despite her humble wants, she was denied an application just because she was a "Negro" and her mother eventually advised her that if she wanted this as her dream job, then she'd better "go get it". 

After two weeks of badgering the MSR's offices to give her a chance, spending hours upon hours every single day just waiting for someone to talk to her, she finally got the job and became San Francisco's first African-American streetcar conductor in mid-1944. Despite her short tenure under the MSR (as she managed to complete her schooling and give birth to a son a year later), she was fondly remembered at the MSR Haight Street carbarn and always had good memories of working with the streetcars. In 2014 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials. Like Arthur Winston of the LA Railway, she remains an icon in African-American public transit history.

A Trip Down Market Street

The MSR's preservation logo.
(Market Street Railway)

Today, the Market Street Railway lives on in the nonprofit group, the similarly-named Market Street Railway. Despite the four tracks giving way to the two MUNI tracks up and down Market Street, it is thanks to this organization that San Francisco still has streetcars to begin with. After being founded in 1976, the Market Street Railway was instrumental in organizing the "San Francisco Historic Trolley Festival" of the 1980s and the eventual permanent return of the streetcars through the F-Market & Wharves heritage streetcar line. Despite the rocky history of their namesake, it is with great pride and relish that I can say the Market Street Railway not only lives up to its namesake, but continues to outclass and improve upon it for years to come. I can, of course, say more about the MSR and the F Market and Wharves Line, but in the immortal words of CGP Grey: That's a story for another time...

Market Street Railway No. 578 trundles past the San Francisco
Railway Museum (both owned and operated by Market Street Railway)
for the Muni 100th Event on November 11, 2012.
(Eric Fischer) 

  

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included the Market Street Railway's historical articles, the volunteers and archives of the San Francisco Cable Car Museum, the SFMTA Photo Library, Chris Carlsson of FoundSF for his historical essay on the 1907 San Francisco Streetcar Strike, and a Washington Post article on Maya Angelou's time as a streetcar conductor. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself and can be found under “Motorman Reymond’s Railroad Gif Carhouse”. On Thursday, we have some fun in the carhouse as we look at the different streetcar types run by MUNI and Market Street Railway! For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!